No cc debt, 50% down. But, starter homes in my area typically sell in the $60-70K range. I think lots of you were looking at down payments of that amount or more.
No cc debt, 50% down. But, starter homes in my area typically sell in the $60-70K range. I think lots of you were looking at down payments of that amount or more.
Oh my gosh, yup! That's my downpayment. Not even close to 20%. What part of the country do you live in? That sounds really nice
I can see not having a 20% down payment. But it is so troubling that people seem to think it's normal to have credit card debt.
Oor CC debt was from a time when we had an uplanned baby on one measly income. It is at a 2% interest rate so I don't really stress about it. We will pay it off someday.
We were going to put less down and do a smaller down payment and go with an FHA loan. (at the time, the FHA limit was higher). But the FHA limit still meant putting down more than 15%. In the end, paying mortgage insurance for 5 years just to buy that 5% wasn't worth it. Right now, I don't think less than 20% down would be possible on this house. The market here has rebounded and the FHA limits have dropped. I don't think they do jumbos with less than 20% down.
We also are in our 30s, not twenties, and had lived modestly on generous salaries to make that happen.
No cc debt, 50% down. But, starter homes in my area typically sell in the $60-70K range. I think lots of you were looking at down payments of that amount or more.
Oh my gosh, yup! That's my downpayment. Not even close to 20%. What part of the country do you live in? That sounds really nice
When I bought my condo by myself I had 20% down, but credit card debt.
When I met my husband he owned his home outright, and bought another house soon after we started dating. He had no emergency fund at all though. He figured the military is a steady paycheck so he didn't think he needed savings. I tried to reason with him and he finally came around after we were relocated this year. We bought our newest home with 5% down. We have cc debt, all at 0% interest. We also have car loans. We now have a 2 1/2 month emergency fund.
I get sad when I look at our emergency fund, and happy when I look at our net worth.
Post by speckledfrog on Aug 27, 2013 10:22:15 GMT -5
We did. I attribute this to my ILs. They had been giving MH money for years and he saved and invested it. He also had stocks and things that he had gotten as gifts that we cashed in. Our tax bill the next year sucked so much ass. Neither of us has student loans, either, and that greatly helped our financial situation. We were very fortunate.
We had minimal CC debt but paid 0 down. H and I were not married when we bought the house. We based everything on his income alone and what he was comfortable with.
This will be the case when we buy next year. We've watched countless friends buy houses before meeting these conditions and it's sort of frustrating that we're two engineers without a house. But whatev.
We bought when we did because prices were down and we got the $8k stimulus back for buying.
So we could have waited to save more/pay more off, but we would have missed out in that $8k and now we have four years of payments into a house that has held it's value nicely, while we've grown our income and savings and paid down debt. I regret nothing.
10% down with house 1 (fairly LCOL.) I believe we were otherwise debt free. 5% down with house 2 (HCOL and only 2 years after house 1 so no appreciation to speak of.) Had a car payment (two but one was close to paid off and not considered as debt because it was within X months of being paid) but otherwise debt-free.
Post by shopgirl07 on Aug 27, 2013 10:52:19 GMT -5
I saved for a loooong time and was able to pay cash for my home. No debt of any kind either. I realize this is not the norm.
But I don't think 20% down is unrealistic even in a HCOL area. If you can avoid PMI I think less than 20% down can be ok. But home ownership is expensive and being house poor is not a fun place to be.
Nope. Had a lot of CC debt and put no money down. That was 10 years ago. We're thinking of purchasing again in 1-3 years. If we do, we will have no CC debt (thank god!) and should be close to 20% down depending on the cost of the house. But, our salaries have significantly jumped in the last 5 years or so which makes it a bit easier to get to %20.
We did last house purchase, and we will have like 30-35% down for the house we are trying to buy. H and I both bought houses separately in our mid twenties, both of us borrowing from parents to make it to 20% and then made some money off selling them even after paying back the loans to the bank of mom and dad. And zero debt other than our existing mortgage.